Greenland Expedition 2010

It is with mixed feelings that I now inform you that I have decided to abort the mission to cross Greenland in May 2010.

For over two years now, the Arctic dream has been occupying a large portion of my life. In this period I have also moved from Oslo, bought a house in the countryside of Nøtterøy from the 1920s and our second child was born 1 1/2 years ago. It has also been a lot of work related travelling after the move, since I commute 100 kilometers to Oslo three days per week and also travel inside an outside Europe to meet with work clients. This has had tremendous consequences in my daily life, both positive and negative. Finally it came to a point where I had to choose what was most important to me, and I started questioning myself why I really wanted to fulfill this quest. In the end, I could not see any other reasons to complete the expedition but “looking good” and building a public reputation. These were simply not good enough to outweight the impact the preparations and expedition itself had for my Family.

I must admit that I really was afraid to tell Terje about my decicion, this late in the game. How would he take it? Would he be able to fulfill his dream? It has been four weeks since I informed him, and a lot of things has happened since then. Obviously, Terje was dissapointed, but I strongly feel that he understood and accepted my decision. We have discussed several scenarioes and Terje is not exactly the guy that postpones things.

Luckily, Terje is still going to cross Greenland in May 2010 and the Expedition has got a new member. I’m still 100% commited to support the Greenland Expedition 2010 and I wish for a successful experience without the big surprices.

Since March 2008 I have got into a training routine from not exercising at all for years. I have spent dozens of nights in tent, majority of them in Vinter time. In total, I have spent weeks hiking and skiing in the Norwegian mountains and countryside, I have attended Glacier training and later experiences. I also got my “Brattkort” in-doors climbing certificate last autumn, and I have been climbing weekly since.

Note! I may still publish blog posts here in the future if Terje allows me to .

- Petter

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Saturday my wife and me got in our car and drove the 1000 km north to the county of Nordland in Norway. We are relocating to the city of Bodø just north of the Arctic Circle. This is approximately the same latitude as our route across the ice cap. Both of us have got new jobs and we have bought our first house. As you can imagine we’re both quite excited. It’s going to be a whole new life for us.

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In a spectacular display of service mindedness the Chief Constable of Greenland spent a full 36 minutes executing and approving our application for a firearm permit. That is – 36 minutes from the application left my email outbox until the signed permit entered my email inbox. I dare you to come up with any public office who can beat that.

Thanks Mia!

After finally having our Expedition License granted we have now submitted our final piece of paperwork. This time around we are applying for a license to carry a firearm for protection in the very unlikely event that we should need to defend ourselves against an attacking polar bear. As stated in a previous post, the chances of polar bear encounters are slim to none. In any case we should be able to scare it, so the firearm is just a precaution. But we need to plan for these things.